The Ground Under Our Feet
by Lavanya Six
Summary: Living in the long shadow of an OP!Taylor. (AU; pre-series divergence. Oneshot.)


_Based on the web serial "Worm" by wildbow._

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**The Ground Under Our Feet**

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As their black helicopter swooped across the storm-ravaged landscape, Weld opened the topmost folder from the pile on his lap. It covered the greatest threat facing the local PRT, in Director Piggot's opinion. "New Wave?" he blurted, metallic eyebrows raised. "They're heroes."

"It's more complicated than labels would make it seem." Weld tried not to take that as a crack against his intelligence. "Keep reading."

Pop culture osmosis meant he already had a rough idea about the family of celebrity capes; a mix of mid-tier Movers and Blasters with only Glory Girl as a standout Alexandria package. Panacea was a Striker 9, of course, but she was just a healer and practically a rogue to boot. The last name on the list, however...

"A Shaker 12? Is that a misprint?"

"No, it's not."

"Geez louise." Weld glanced at the briefing again. Something about the cape, this Anuket, twigged his memory, but what? He vaguely recalled that she had been helping run defense against the waves during Leviathan's attack, but that didn't feel quite right. "It's a big number, but I'm not seeing why another hero would be gunning for us."

"May I assume you're familiar with the basics of the Shadow Stalker case?"

"One of your ex-Wards. Got caught bullying a classmate when the girl publicly triggered." He blinked. "Ah. I knew I recognized the name. Taylor Hebert. So, the girl in the locker joined New Wave?"

"Yes, but what you're missing is context. Shadow Stalker wasn't just a Ward, she was on parole for several crimes committed as a solo vigilante. Unlike the majority of the Wards, she attended a different high school in the poorer section of the city. It had a major gang problem. The school's administration turned a blind eye to multiple bullying incidents leading up the events of this January, and did not inform the PRT that Shadow Stalker was violating the terms of her parole."

"Why didn't I hear about this in the news?"

Weld could guess, but he wanted to hear how his new boss phrased her own defense. It would tell him about her mentality.

Piggot maintained a cool, dispassionate tone. "The blowback from letting it be publicly known that the PRT recruits reform-minded villains and vigilantes prevented us from disclosing that information, which didn't help when the Hebert family somehow found out on their own. The leak is still under investigation. In any case, rather than Shadow Stalker coming off as a bad apple, Taylor Hebert then saw the PRT as a whole as culpable in her bullying campaign."

"That's when New Wave stepped in?"

A nod. "Her civilian identity was compromised, and a Ward behaving badly played to New Wave's claims of transparency."

"I'm guessing it must have been pretty grizzly, what Shadow Stalker did to her." Weld didn't remember much about the case's specifics. It had only been in the news for a few days. Trigger events weren't the stuff of casual conversation for those who could remember theirs, however.

"The locker she had been shoved into was filled with biohazardous waste. Taylor Hebert, for lack of a better term, terraformed it. The waste was converted into flowering vines the filtered the air and cushioned her while she was cramped in a stress position. They also grew through the crevices of her locker door and tore it off its hinges, but not before spreading out to several surrounding lockers."

"Sounds like a second Panacea."

"More like a second Nilbog," she replied. "Anuket can warp both organic and inorganic matter into whatever form she desires, but always as part of a larger interlocking ecosystem. What she did to escape her locker was instinctual, when her powers was new and raw. New Wave's tutelage saw her skills grow more sophisticated. She still has to obey the Manton Limit, thankfully, but like Vista she can work around the people in a given area with sufficient time."

"What's her maximum range?"

Piggot gestured out the helicopter's side window.

Weld followed her finger to find the nighttime cityscape of Brockton Bay. Smaller and gloomier than his native Boston, it was nevertheless a better sight than he expected. The media really must have been exaggerating about the lawlessness and marauding looters if they'd been able to repair and power that many street lights in just a couple weeks. The city had been an awful mess when he'd left it right after the battle with Leviathan. They'd still be performing extensive S&amp;R back then, which he couldn't help with thanks to his problem of absorbing stray metal.

"Half the city is still without electricity," Piggot said.

Weld whipped his head back around. "What?"

"What you're looking at is the glow from bioluminescent plants. They're networked via the storm drains, and entwined themselves on street lights and telephone poles. Anuket piggybacked the ruins of the existing infrastructure to build her own organic replacement."

"That's crazy. What do they run on?"

Director Piggot thankfully didn't say people, as he half-expected. "Hydroelectricity, supplemented by some exotic variation of photosynthesis. There's a reef out in the bay that wasn't there last week, with what Armsmaster describes as countless miniature semi-organic turbines. It's powering a whole alternate electrical grid. Not enough juice for civilians to tap into on a practical basis, but that seems to be inexperience on Anuket's part more than anything else."

"Are the plants self-replicating?"

"No, nothing like that yet. But she has an arrest order preauthorized if she does."

Which was why she hadn't gone that far, Weld knew. The girl's partnership with New Wave would have given her a grounding in what not to do with the sort of power she had. Even a heroic cape could, by simple accident, cause an ecological disaster if one of their creations went rampant.

"So range-wise, we're talking the whole city."

Piggot shook her head, and her jowls. "When I said terraformation, that wasn't just restricted to plants. She's offered, through her father's connection to the Dockworker's Association, to dredge the bay once the present emergency has passed. In the meanwhile she's been coordinating with the PRT to plan the weather forecast for Brockton Bay. Her Shaker ability give her macro-level climate control, seemingly halfway to Boston from here — which is classified information, by the way. We don't want to alarm the public."

Weld could only gape at her, for once at a loss for words.

"Anuket is terraforming Shaker whose power works on a geographic scale. From what we've gathered, she can engineer whole ecosystems _ex nilho_. Her only limitations are Manton and inexperience. Leviathan's handiwork has given her plenty to practice on. "

"And you... think she's switched teams? Gone villain, or going to go?"

"No."

"Then why is she a threat, besides her raw power?"

"Anuket is becoming the focal point of considerable local popularity," Piggot explained. "She's taken the Docks as her own territory, essentially, and has entrenched herself with earthworks and other barriers against attack. The few surviving New Wave members are also contributing security against rival factions, primarily Kaiser's Empire Eighty-Eight."

"So she's gone warlord."

Piggot didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either. "Anuket and Panacea have been collaborating on a number of projects to provide humanitarian aid to the city's displaced population, including the ongoing desalination of the new Crater Lake. She started growing crops. She moved onto utilities. Now she's growing buildings. It all adds up to a whole alternate urban ecology."

"Are they open to continuing their current collaborations with us?"

"They are," Piggot replied, "and we are."

"Then, with all due respect ma'am, what's the problem?"

"Not one problem, Weld, but _three_. The first is image. The whole country is watching to see if we can do our jobs. We can't have our work done for us by independent capes. The PRT itself might be called into question. So I need the Wards and the Protectorate capes to hit harder on crime. Bring down Kaiser and the other players, stop the roving gangs, and restore sanity."

He nodded.

"The second problem is capes operating publicly in such a radical fashion. Anuket is practically tailor-made to press the business community's buttons about fears of parahumans destroying the traditional economy. Even a single well-financed smear campaign could be disastrous for human-parahuman relations."

Down below on the street, Weld tensed at the sight of somebody limply dangling at the end of a noose tied to an unpowered traffic light. He pointed it out to Piggot, but she waved him off. It was, apparently, nothing special here.

"Finally, there's a political problem. We have a mayoral election coming up in a few weeks, and the candidates are already prodding one another about the veritable second city springing up on the North Side. What Anuket is doing is new and strange, and that scares some people, which makes them do and say unwise things."

"Meaning the candidates might make enemies out of us or New Wave to win, and saddle up next to the other guy. Which will cause bigger issues down the road regardless of who wins."

"I didn't say that. I was simply making an observation."

"Got it."

Their helicopter lowered itself to the PRT rooftop helipad.

Piggot spoke to him over their headsets even as their rooters slowed. "Anuket has done us one favor. With the food she and Panacea are producing, the relief convoys aren't under as much pressure to deliver. We've begun peeling capes off the escort missions to prepare for another task. It's time for us to go to war against Empire Eighty-Eight, and I expect nothing less than absolute victory. Knowing what you're in for, are you ready to take command of the local Wards?"

"I'm ready to try, ma'am."

"Good."

He hesitated. "And after they're in the bag?"

She looked him dead in the eye. "Too early to say."


End file.
